


Lucidity

by Jacque_le_Prince



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Lucid Dreaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27393283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacque_le_Prince/pseuds/Jacque_le_Prince
Summary: "A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment..."
Kudos: 1





	Lucidity

**Author's Note:**

> The third and final story written for my senior creative writing class.

Whenever I gained control of the dream, I would see Chloe.

It would start with a few rushed breaths, the kind you would take when you stopped to breathe while swimming. Then the fuzz of sleep would clear from my brain. Whatever I was doing before was no longer just an action directed by the dream. I had the choice to move however I wanted. Then a sturdy bark would reach my ears. Chloe, all donned in lilac fur, would come flying in on her shimmering fairy wings. She’d lap at my face, her breath sweet as pound cake, and my adventure would begin.

For tonight’s dream, I decided that I wanted to go rollerskating.

As soon as that thought came to mind, my surroundings darkened as I was transported to a roller rink with only strobe lights and distant arcade games as illumination. Calling it a “rink”, though, wouldn’t be very appropriate. It was an open building formed by curving hallways and spacious sections. Everyone was free to skate wherever they wanted, in any direction without worry of collision. Their cruising bodies were painted with glow in the dark tattoos, makeup, and hair dye. When I looked down at myself, I saw my skin adorned the same things.

Neon orange and green stars lined my toned arms, and Hello Kitty stickers filled whatever space was left. I would also see that I was wearing thigh high socks, hot pink jean shorts fit for a Barbie doll, and skates with a shooting star emblem on each.

The sugary bubbles and cotton candy clouds that floated around the space brushed past my exposed skin in a cool breeze. I leaned forward to catch a bubble on my tongue and was met with the tart flavor of a pink Starburst.

Immediately, I was reminded that I hadn’t eaten before bed. Much to my delight, a chocolate-dipped waffle cone topped with mint sorbet and decorated with pocky appeared in my hand. It was just like it appeared on Instagram photos, and when I brought it to my lips, it tasted just as I had imagined.

I skated around as I ate, the sorbet never wavering. Even when I took the outstretched hands of other skaters and let the momentum swing us around, my treat never gave in to gravity.

I was friends with each and every one of those skaters. No names or pasts came to mind, but the warm feeling of companionship blossomed in my chest whenever I drew near to them. Even the people at the arcade machines, whose faces were just amalgamations of faces that I see everyday, they were my dearest friends.

They cheered and hyped up whomever was playing the game. Even their individual voices, I knew, were collected from those that I hear on TV and in Youtube videos. Some of the voices were modeled after actors and vloggers whose voices I liked hearing the most. Together, in this dream, they were blissful to my ears.

Though, one of the arcade machines nearby started to malfunction. The rough beeps that it was making was easy to ignore under the collective noise of everything else in the roller rink, but then it started to get louder and even annoying.

I reached up to cover my ears as it scraped my eardrums, but it didn’t seem to do much. I pushed harder and harder until it felt like my head would collapse under the pressure of my own hands, and then I realized that the pain wasn’t coming from my hands. It was coming from the strain of having my normal six hours of sleep cut down even shorter.

Ah, that’s right. I have a doctor’s appointment before work today.

* * *

My hand came down on the beeping phone, trying with all of its might to work past its faulty circuits and wake me up at the time I requested. My clumsy fumbling made it clatter onto the floor, and the sound of the already cracked screen fracturing even more made my eyes pop open.

I stumbled to the floor to pick up the phone and shut off the alarm, only to see that it had sounded off half an hour later than when it was supposed to.

As if to escape my brewing outburst, the screen cut to black. I could only give a woeful sigh. Expecting this phone to last until I could afford a new one was probably too hopeful.

I nearly dropped the phone again when a cough caused my chest to spasm. Though, that was normal, especially when I had just woken up.

I stood up, gently placed my phone on the nightstand, and swiftly got ready for the day ahead of me.

* * *

“Hi! You’re late.”

That was how Dr. Dulik greeted me when it was my turn to come into his gray, dimly lit office. Sadly, his heavy accent did nothing to conceal the blunt words. What could it have been? Russian, Serbian maybe?

“It’s nice to see you, too,” I said, seating myself in the chair before him.

His laugh made me wonder if sarcastic exchanges fit into his sense of humor. That would probably be comforting to know that he wasn’t just being rude out of malice, then.

“So you’re having more vision troubles, I hear?” he asked, “It must be that desk job you have since you’re looking at a screen all day.”

“Probably,” I said, taking off my glasses, “But I’ve had these since high school, so I think I’d have to get a replacement sooner or later.”

“Not if you take good care of your eyes,” Dr. Dulik said, adjusting the eye examination machine between us, “Okay, look at this with your right eye and tell me what you see.”

We went through the standard practice of me reading the letters through the lens with him changing slides. We had moved onto my left eye when I had first seen it.

Stars twirled like pinwheels on the slide around the letter “H”. They weren’t the blinks of light that decorated the night sky, but rather cartoon stars colored a soft, creamy yellow.

I leaned away and rubbed my eye, but when I pressed my face back onto the machine, the stars were still there.

Well, that’s certainly new. Was it something for kids who were getting eye exams?

“H, and...do you want me to count the stars, too?” I asked.

“What stars?”

Uh oh.

I lifted my head up, feeling uneasy. Even though Dr. Dulik was probably just pranking me, or had forgotten about this slide, there was something oddly familiar about those stars.

“The yellow ones...o-on the slide,” I said, trying to stand my ground.

Dr. Dulik furrowed his brow as he inspected the machine.

He gave a dry laugh and said, “There’s no stars, Miranda. If you’re seeing stars on this slide, then maybe you need another appointment with a different kind of doctor. Maybe your parents’ smoking habit left you with more than a cough.”

“Too far, Dr. Dulik,” was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. After all, I was the one who was dumb enough to let that piece of information slip during casual conversation one day.

Instead, I forced out a chuckle of my own, suppressing the cough that it nearly triggered.

* * *

At work, no one made note of my tardiness. Granted, that was because no one ever greeted me when I came in. If any of my gray-clad coworkers looked my way, they just awkwardly turned back to whatever they were doing before. It was too small of a thing to really bother me that much, but when combined with how I was often treated as a stranger even when I tried to reach out and socialize, it had a little more impact. Even as a fully functioning adult, I somehow managed to carry my school reputation as the mousy girl no one wanted to hang out with into my career. And here I thought my days of eating lunch alone ended at graduation.

When I sat at my desk doing my work, I could vicariously participate in everyone’s conversation whenever their volume overflowed into my workspace. It was probably wrong considering it was eavesdropping, but I made an effort to shut out conversations that I felt were too personal, and only focused on trivial chatter.

Today was no different. As Jerry talked about a late night talk show, I listened and practiced my responses.

“I mean, SNL doesn’t have many good episodes, but this one was golden.”

“ _Why? Did one of your favorite celebrities host the episode?_ ”

“That skit about Donald Trump was one of their best skits in years. I had to call my wife in the room just to see it!”

“ _Well, I’m sure the writers had a lot of material to work with, considering how things have been_.”

“She was kinda mad at me, though, because she was busy and I could’ve just recorded it for her.”

Of course, my mental responses didn’t always fit so smoothly into the conversations, especially when I thought of responses for every single person who spoke. It was fun imagining myself among them, laughing and winning them over with jokes of my own. Though, I knew my attempts would just fall flat again.

“Yeah, I like the cotton candy clouds, too.”

Another coworker’s voice stuck out to me. It was Angela, standing at the adjacent cubicle while idly shuffling files in her arms.

“But the candied bubbles are even better,” she continued, “I wouldn’t mind if there were champagne-flavored bubbles, though. It seems more fitting.”

“Yeah, but it’d clash with the whole cutesy aesthetic the rink’s got going on.”

I recognized the second voice as Vivi. Lowering my eyes allowed me to see the top of her hair bun poking up from her cubicle.

That feeling of uneasy familiarity nestled its way back into my gut. I mean, it was so obvious what they were talking about, but how could they know about _my_ dreams? How could either of them experience the exact same thing that I had been visiting for countless nights of my life?

I found myself standing up from my seat, wincing at the awkward thunk it made against the wall from my eagerness. Because of that, Vivi and Angela were looking at me before I even got past the word, “Uh…”

“Are you guys talking about that one roller rink?” I tentatively asked.

I didn’t want to risk embarrassing myself by directly asking if they were having the same dreams as me, but Angela’s response gave me a mild dosage of embarrassment anyway.

“Huh? No, we were talking about which letters needed to be printed.”

The way her eyes squinted and her head angled to the side told me, “How did you get “roller rink” out of anything we said?”

“Oh,” I said, once again forcing a polite laugh.

This time, it actually did trigger a cough. Even though I had covered my mouth, Angela and Vivi both leaned back in slight disgust.

I hushed a quiet, “Excuse me,” before sitting back down and burying myself into my work.

* * *

While everyone ending their shift with me headed towards the parking lot to leave, I went to the sidewalk to begin my daily walk to the subway.

I kept my eyes glued to the ground to make sure I didn’t soil the only work shoes I had with the city’s grime. I didn’t exactly have the proper materials to clean dead rat remains, a drunkard’s vomit, or spit from the rightfully bitter homeless off of the black leather. Though, I had to admit, the speckles of broken bottles added a bit of color to the otherwise gray scenery.

When I got to the more populated areas of the city, I found myself trailing behind a girl who was attracting all sorts of vulgar comments and whistles.

From the back, I could see that she was a healthy-looking woman with thigh high socks and pink jean shorts hugging her form. The hair down her back prevented me from seeing what type of shirt she was wearing. She would have looked like a Barbie doll if she was blonde.

Even though she was probably intimidated by the sickening forms of flirtations the men threw her way, my body tingled with envy. Never in all my life had I given boys a good reason to look my way. I had nerdy glasses, an old woman’s cough, curves in the wrong places, and about as much grace as a newborn giraffe. Even if I decided to trade in my gray suit and turtleneck for a fun, preppy outfit like that girl’s, the most attention I would probably get is a jeer.

Coupled with that envy was another disturbing sense of familiarity.

I definitely wore that in my dream, I thought, but with how everything else has been going so far, maybe I’m just reaching. Besides, it’s not like no one has ever worn pink jean shorts and white thigh high socks together before.

My journey with the girl ended when I made it to the mouth of the subway entrance. As I descended the concrete steps, I repressed my petty jealousy and irrational déjà vu to give a silent prayer that she would get home safely.

I prepared myself for the sweltering stench of the subway below. The seasonal heat always intensified the smell, but after years of using it, I had built up some level of a tolerance to it.

However, when I stepped into the dark, murky tunnels, I was struck by another feeling of recognition.

Dear god, I thought as my nostrils flared.

The air was downright _saccharine_.

Bubblegum, chocolate, mint, cherry, coconut, vanilla bean, pink lemonade--it was all I could smell.

Impossible, am I losing my mind?

It felt almost like a cruel joke at this point, flaunting these nighttime fantasies in broad daylight. It was like someone knew how miserable I felt in my daily life, and how badly I wanted to see some form of color in this drab, gray world. Everyday, I pushed down those bitter feelings by telling myself that I should just be happy to have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food in my pantry. And what I was seeing...hearing... _smelling_...it was unscrewing the cap to a shaken, trembling bottle.

No, be realistic, I told myself as I maneuvered through the subway. This is the real world. You wake up, go to work to earn the money you need to support yourself, come back home, and rinse and repeat. If you can do that, it means you’ve succeeded in life. There’s nothing more to want or aspire for. You should be happy. You should be...

Then I saw her.

The lilac canine illuminated by the fairy dust she emanated from her wings, bathing the tracks in an ethereal light. Chloe.

If I saw her, that meant that I could control the dream, but I wasn’t dreaming. I was wide awake, standing in the musty underbelly of this gray world. This Chloe wasn’t real. My Chloe had died over a decade ago after running into some traffic. What I was looking at was an invitation.

An invitation to dream forever.

So I took that step off of the platform to reach out and let her lap at my hand.

I then fell into the most peaceful sleep I would ever have.


End file.
